Biter Pathfinding, custom mapgens question
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2021 10:41 am
This is purely a question based on some things I have noticed happen, and wanted to see if it was obvious already or not.
Some scenarios have map gen code that generates areas of Void on a map as you explore, to "shape the map" into mazes, or to separate bases etc etc, but this Void Zones will ONLY be put down if you reveal it with Radar or walk there, as they become "explored" and get "drawn in" to the permanent visible chunk map.
The question becomes:
* How can the Biters possibly know, as far as "making paths", if a Chunk is "Void" or "normal land like the Map Seed is telling them", in order to path OVER or AROUND that chunk? Will they just "take impossible shortcuts through that Void" until someone explores that area, and makes it draw that Void IN.
Reason I ask is because on one scenario I play on, I could see Biter Paths (debug option) going STRAIGHT THROUGH what I knew was void, because I knew ahead of time where the Void divider lines would be drawn. This made me assume that the game could not or was unable to "call the custom map gen draw code" as part of its path checking generation. It simply checked the BASE Map Seed and made paths based on that.
In this situation, the custom mag generation was part of the scenario code, not part of an installed "Map Generation Mod", which for all I know works differently. I have also been told that if it the person is making calls to to the map gen part in a weird way, it could be why the pathfinder is just treating the map as "vanilla map seed" for calculations.
Hopefully I explained this properly and it makes sense, but let me know if I failed.
Some scenarios have map gen code that generates areas of Void on a map as you explore, to "shape the map" into mazes, or to separate bases etc etc, but this Void Zones will ONLY be put down if you reveal it with Radar or walk there, as they become "explored" and get "drawn in" to the permanent visible chunk map.
The question becomes:
* How can the Biters possibly know, as far as "making paths", if a Chunk is "Void" or "normal land like the Map Seed is telling them", in order to path OVER or AROUND that chunk? Will they just "take impossible shortcuts through that Void" until someone explores that area, and makes it draw that Void IN.
Reason I ask is because on one scenario I play on, I could see Biter Paths (debug option) going STRAIGHT THROUGH what I knew was void, because I knew ahead of time where the Void divider lines would be drawn. This made me assume that the game could not or was unable to "call the custom map gen draw code" as part of its path checking generation. It simply checked the BASE Map Seed and made paths based on that.
In this situation, the custom mag generation was part of the scenario code, not part of an installed "Map Generation Mod", which for all I know works differently. I have also been told that if it the person is making calls to to the map gen part in a weird way, it could be why the pathfinder is just treating the map as "vanilla map seed" for calculations.
Hopefully I explained this properly and it makes sense, but let me know if I failed.